Danny

Nah, I think this is going to be pretty much permanent. What reason is there for the average person to vote Labour? They (since they don't pay attention to the ins and outs of politics) are just going to see a party which will give them the same policies as the current government (actually, much as it pains me to say it, Cameron's speech was perhaps more left-wing than Ed Miliband's miserable wet fish of a speech) but with even less competence -- why would people vote for that? Labour have blown it.

Conservatives have their first lead with YouGov in two and a half years. 35% to Labour's 34%.

The level of debt we have atm would only really become unmanageable if the economy wasn't growing strongly. To take Japan as an example, they're caught in a vicious spiral but it's not really because of the debt/deficit itself, it's because their economy is in a long-term slump -- because their population is so "old" on average, they have tons of people whose pensions and healthcare need to be paid for, but relatively few people who are still young enough to work to actually pay for it. So their level of debt is mounting up all the time. In the UK it's different because our population is so much "younger", the balance of people in work compared to the retired is much healthier, mainly thanks to immigration actually. As long as that continues, there's no real reason to think our debt burden isn't sustainable.

But there's been a deficit for something like 100 of the last 150 years, and nothing bad has ever come from it :lol: Today showed even the Conservatives don't care about it since they're happy to give money away with tax cuts. I mean, we have a very big deficit now, but we're still considered one of the "safest" economies in the world, because the deficit is pretty much irrelevant to that. I predict that, no matter who wins the next election, there will still be a big deficit by 2020. And nobody will care.

Gosh, "eccentric" was rather an understatement...

You might have a point if this question just asked about "the economy" in general (which people might have included the deficit in), but the question specifically asked about "getting the economy growing and creating jobs" -- I really don't think people would've selected that option if what they really meant was the deficit. And it's not just this question either. The same polling found that, when people were specifically asked whether there should be 5 more years of cuts, 55% said no to 45% yes (which admittedly is a closer split than I would hope for). It's just NEVER been true that everyone's bought the Conservatives' line that the deficit is some big evil which must be gotten rid of at all costs.

I have never even denied this is the case, but again, that's got NOTHING to do with the deficit specifically (as shown by people constantly saying they don't care about it or actively don't think yet more cuts are needed), and so Labour posturing about it doesn't do anything to solve their problem. Their problem is just caused by them projecting such incompetence in general -- and saying that cuts were a bad idea consistently for a few years, then changing your mind and saying they're a good thing, does not do ANYTHING to show competence to say the least. As shown by the fact their economic credibility numbers have tumbled further over the past year as compared to when they were doing the shockingly Marxist thing of...saying the government should spend some money. The election campaign will probably feature a ton of these carcrash interviews, where the very attempts to be "credible" and "tough" only end up making them look even more incompetent because of how contradictory and incoherent their stance is: UzPPOHfIp34

Despite the media's infatuation with it, the public rank the deficit/national debt as only their 5th biggest issue in their opinion: 01 Economic growth 02 Immigration 03 Cost of living 04 NHS 05 Cutting the deficit/debt http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/up...int-Phase-5.pdf (p.29)

I'm actually not even saying there should be a drastically higher minimum wage, precisely because it's just not practical for the government to set it at £20 an hour or whatever since there would always be some small businesses who couldn't cope with that. But there should be MUCH stronger trade unions who can force higher wages in most sectors/industries bar those exceptions that can't cope with it. This is why I was saying the other day that the minimum wage itself is near irrelevant, it's a total blunt instrument -- there is very little correlation between the countries with the highest average wages (not least Germany) and the highest legal minimum wages, it usually comes down to how powerful the trade union movement is. (Speaking of which, shouldn't trade unions be one of the very best examples of "people and society taking charge rather than big government" that all those faux-left thinktanks are always waffling on about?)

LOL. If people wanted "moderates"/"centrism", the Lib Dems would be soaring in the polls. The Tories' poll ratings have been going up ever since they started becoming more Euro-crazy a couple of years ago anyway (since, much as I don't agree with it, they atleast look like they have a vague sense of purpose unlike most mainstream parties these days). Incidentally, I'm hoping if Labour get into government, Labour backbench MPs will have learnt from the current Tories and will actually hold the government's feet to the fire and refuse to vote through anything which clashes with core Labour principles. To be fair, there are some decent new candidates who I hope will do that -- our new candidate for example, while not some "loony-leftie", has promised he will not be voting for any further local government cuts.

Did you really think "increase the minimum wage to a slightly less pitiful level" or "increase NHS spending by even less than the Tories" were going to inspire people?

Latest polls have shown Labour have got no "bounce" from their conference. No surprise that "Tory policies with half as much competence" is not proving a winning formula. But more interesting is that YouGov gives Ed Miliband a lead over David Cameron on welfare (26% to 21%). Which is somewhat at odds with the media's claims that everyone loves the Tories' "kick a scrounger" policies, and that Labour apparently need to show they can be "tough" on bullying the most vulnerable people in the country.

I'm starting to think UKIP could do even better than anyone thought. Up to 20% share of the vote at next year's election perhaps.

Agreed. Where is the logic in "helping" those civilians suffering from Islamic State by bombing/killing them ourselves? And how do they think the friends/relatives of those civilians that are killed going to react? Are they likely to take some high-minded view that the deaths were for the greater good, or are they going to be furious at the West and be more sympathetic to the jihadists' argument that the West is the enemy? It's hard not to feel the only reason this is happening is so that the "powers that be" feel good about themselves and the fact that they're Doing Something.

There was an article in the Guardian at the weekend which suggested she was going to pretty much give up on independence and just push for full devo-max (rather than the feeble version currently offered by the Westminster parties).

I don't really agree with that at all -- it was one of the main reasons for Tory activists defecting to UKIP, but as has been well established at this point they're just not representative of UKIP voters generally. I actually agree with you that I would not be happy at all if Labour started being "socially conservative", not least because they'd be so utterly unconvincing at it (this new talk of them talking about "Englishness" would be laughed at by everyone.....I worry that a lot of Labour people seem to think all working-class people are 1960s stereotypes), but there's no alternative to Labour reaching out to those voters one way or another. There just isn't a big enough market for a party which makes social liberalism their main raison d'etre (which, again, is different to having those policies but as a lower priority). The poll Suedehead references is proof of that, 34% of UKIP voters say their preference is for a Labour government (whereas just 6% of Tory voters say that), while 70% of Kippers say they're less likely to vote Tory because of the cuts. There is nowhere else to go for Labour to get votes.

And how many of them mentioned the deficit? :P It depends what you mean by 'social liberal' -- just immigration? I really don't think for most of these people that gay rights, women's rights and general race issues would be a "deal-breaker" even if they don't necessarily agree totally with them -- there's left-wing parties in Spain, France and indeed Scotland which have won over these types of people recently despite having generally liberal social policies, the only difference was they didn't make them the MOST important things and put strongly leftwing economic policies that would obviously help poor people at the centre. (Labour quite obviously does not have such economic policies at the moment, so it's no wonder people are not going to be convinced.)

But the thing is the minimum wage itself is close to irrelevant. Germany has much higher wages on average, even though they don't have any official minimum wage. The key difference is they actually have strong trade unions who can hold employers' feet to the fire and force them to pay good wages.

Oh God, this "10-year plan for a world-class Britain" thing is going to be one of those phrases Labour spokesmen go on TV and robotically recite time after time isn't it (for some reason they don't seem to realise that it's possible to consistently get across one message without using the EXACT same form of words and EXACT same tone of voice).

The problem is that atleast half of the possible replacements are even less charismatic and inspiring than Miliband (incredible though that sounds). Part of me is actually starting to wish Gordon Brown could take over again.

It seems they're going full steam ahead with their pitch of "Vote Labour for Tory cuts delivered with half the competence!". I don't see it working out, somehow.

I think they've been talking about giving cities more power, which I don't like all that much because the northern cities (especially Manchester and Liverpool) are actually doing OK-ish, it's the working-class towns in the north that have really been neglected and left to rot away over the past decades. I'd rather regional parliaments/assemblies to look after everyone's interests. Love how nakedly partisan the Tories' "English votes for English laws" thing is, but don't know why Labour commentators are going so crazy about how it would stop them winning any elections; by my maths, they would only need to win 8 additional seats in England to make up the ground lost by excluding non-English MPs.

I think it's extremely likely the SNP will either get a majority or just fall short in 2016. I mean, just the "Yes" vote alone would probably give the SNP another majority, and it's not like there's any signs their rivals are going to get more popular. Why wouldn't they continue to feed off the massive anger and disillusionment there is with the Westminster parties?

If that analysis is true, and Scotland is fundamentally a pro-independence country, that does not exactly bode well for the next referendum within 5-10 years.

:D Snobbish and plain wrong though he is, kudos to him for atleast having the guts to say out loud what all of the elites think: that this huge crisis is all the fault of the "Great Unwashed" for not realising the supposed "facts" of how political parties supposedly have to act, rather than it being the fault of the politicians themselves